Osseointegrated dental implant bridges have been clinically used with good results for more than 20 years, see for example
Br.ang.nemark/Zarb/Albrektsson: "Tissue-Integrated Prostheses", Quintessence Books, 1985.
Such a bridge construction is anchored in the jawbone by means of a plurality of helical anchorage elements of titanium, so-called fixtures, on which fistular spacers are then disposed for anchoring the prosthesis proper. The bearing skeleton of a prosthetic construction, for example a dental bridge, is normally entitled the suprastructure and has hitherto been produced pursuant to prior-art casting technology in metal. The clearly dominant alloy which has been employed in such instance within Swedish dental care includes noble metals such as gold, platinum and palladium.
Because of the high material costs and the complex production procedure, such prosthetic constructions are extremely expensive.
In the article
N. Bjoork, K. Ekstrand and I. E. Ruyter: "Implant-fixed dental bridges from carbon/graphite fibre reinforced poly (methyl methacrylate) in Biomaterials 1986", Vol 7, January, pp. 73-75,
the production has also been suggested of prosthetic bridge constructions in fiber-reinforced plastic. According to the method described therein, the bridge construction is built up such that the carbon fibres are wound around special titanium cones and then embedded in a polymer. However, such a method is highly circumstantial and does not give the sought-after controllable high fiber content.